It’s all fun and games, politics and ideology until someone gets…sick.

If you don’t believe it, just ask Spike Dolomite Ward, a California progressive and non-profit activist who campaigned in support of the Obama election effort in 2008 only to turn against the President, as many progressives have done, when he disappointed her by not going far enough with the Affordable Care Act.

But that was before Spike was diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer and found out how just how much the President had, in fact, come through for her and the many others in her difficult position. …

Aside from the obvious good news in this story, there is a message that one can only hope that progressive writers who havehammered Obamacare because they did not get all that they wanted – and you know who you are - will finally begin to understand.

By focusing on the failure to succeed with the public option – an idea that was doomed to failure in the Congress from the beginning – and a few other unfulfilled wishes, these people have failed to let people know the important things the law did accomplish. There are a lot ofSpikes out there who do not know that the Affordable Care Act solved the pressing problem Spike was facing and these people may not have a Becky in their life to discover that there may now be a solution to avoid a potentially disastrous circumstance.

As I said, it’s all fun and games, ideology and politics until you or someone in your family gets cancer and can’t pay for treatment.

That’s when the politics end and real life steps in. We would do well to keep that in mind.